‘Oh, Kitty is right enough,’ said the other hastily; and then she cast a glance round the room. ‘Are we quite alone?’ she asked; ‘there are so many corners in this room, one never knows who may be listening. Mrs. Blencarrow, I do not come to speak of Kitty, but about yourself.’
‘About myself?’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Bircham, with a gasp, ‘you speak in that innocent tone as if it was quite surprising that anyone could have anything to say of you.’
Mrs. Blencarrow changed her position so as to get her back to the light; one of those overwhelming flushes which were habitual to her had come scorching over her face.
‘No more surprising to me than—to any of us,’ she said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘What is it that I have done?’
‘Oh, Mrs. Blencarrow—though why I should go on calling you Mrs. Blencarrow when that’s not your name——’
‘Not my name!’ There was a shrill sort of quaver in her voice, a keen note as of astonishment and dismay.
‘I wish,’ cried Mrs. Bircham, growing red, and fanning herself with her muff in her excitement—‘I wish you wouldn’t go on repeating what I say; it’s maddening—and always as if you didn’t know. Why don’t you call yourself by your proper name? How can you go on deceiving everybody, and even your own poor children, living on false pretences, “lying all round,” as my husband says? Oh, I know you’ve been doing it for years; you’ve got accustomed to it, I suppose; but don’t you know how disgraceful it is, and what everybody will say?’
Had there been any critic of human nature present, it would have gone greatly against Mrs. Blencarrow that she was not astonished at this attack. She rose up with a fine gesture of pride.
‘This is an extraordinary assault to make upon me,’ she said, ‘in my own house.’